The theory that the Stalin-era famine in Ukraine was aimed against the Ukrainian people alone was developed in the US as an anti-Russian propaganda tool, a Crimean legislator and historian said on Monday. “The theory that the famine was aimed against the Ukrainian nation was born in the US in 1984 during the fight against the Soviet Union, ‘the empire of evil’,” said Anatolyi Zhilin. He added that “Russophobe” Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as an adviser to Kennedy and Johnson administration officials during the 1960s, and the current wife of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yushchenko were involved in creating the myth, designed to “unite the Ukrainian nation in the face of a ‘common enemy’ — Russia and the Russians.” Yushchenko’s wife, Kateryna Yushchenko, is a former US State Department official who was also a White House employee under Reagan. She also worked at the US Treasury and was on the staff at the US Congress. She became a Ukrainian citizen in 2005. Zhilin expressed his worries that the Ukrainian security services, “not professional historians,” were currently beefing up public interest in the topic by unearthing archival data. The legislator also said most residents of Crimea, a predominantly Russian-speaking area of Ukraine, refused to treat the Holodomor as an act of genocide against Ukrainians. “The theory that Russians starved Ukrainians in the 20th century is absolutely unacceptable for the majority of the Crimean population,” Zhilin said. Most residents of Crimea abstained from attending official events last Saturday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor in Ukraine.